


The Taste of Honey

by calenmir



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 23:58:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calenmir/pseuds/calenmir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo is having trouble adjusting to life back in Bag End after the quest has ended. Something...or someone...seems to be missing. But an unexpected visitor may be just what he's been waiting for....</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Taste of Honey

**Author's Note:**

> Oops! Bilbofur fluffiness!

Bag End had never seemed so large or so quiet before.

Even after his mother Belladonna had passed away, leaving Bilbo alone in the large smial, it had never seemed quite so empty. She had been unwell before the end and he’d had the time to prepare himself, after all.

But it had been long months now since he’d returned from Erebor, and still Bilbo found himself knocking about aimlessly in a house that no longer felt like a home. He’d tried to fill his days; he’d taken over the gardening, but Hamfast Gamgee was so affronted to be displaced as Bag End’s gardener that Bilbo had quickly relinquished the task back to his neighbor on Bagshot Row. Then Bilbo had started keeping bees, brewing mead and baking honey-cakes with the results. They weren’t quite like the honey-cakes Beorn had fed them, but he was getting closer each time. For a while, he tried spending a few evenings a week at the Green Dragon, trying to relax into the companionship of his fellow hobbits, but while they drank and laughed and sang, Bilbo could not help but remember other laughter, other songs. Now he only went to the pub when a party of dwarven traders was passing through the Shire on their way to or from the Ered Luin settlements, striking up conversations and, if the party had been to Erebor, trying to learn news of his friends…one in particular, though he’d never admit that to anyone.

He still dreamed about his adventure. At first he had woken from nightmares nearly every night, seeing Thorin’s bloodied form in the healer’s tent, stabbing at spiders over and over, telling riddles in the dark with a dangerous creature, wandering endless tunnels pursued by something he could not see, finding himself invisible and lost to his friends even after he took off the ring. 

Later, though, the nightmares had faded and he had dreamed instead of laughing eyes the color of oak leaves in early fall and a voice like warm velvet, clever hands and a silly hat. When he woke from one of _those_ dreams, he would spend the day in a fog of nostalgia and yearning, sitting for long hours on the bench in the garden drinking mead and eating his honey-cakes, remembering the taste of Bofur’s lips on the mouth of the mead-flask they’d passed between them, remembering those clever hands breaking a honey-cake into two for sharing. 

Soon, he was dreaming those dreams nearly every night. 

Soon, the mead and honey-cakes were no longer enough to remind him. He took to trading with the traveling dwarves, giving them seed cakes and biscuits in exchange for dwarven whiskey, the kind Bofur had liked. The sweet, earthy musk of it burned like dragon-fire in Bilbo's throat as he daydreamed.

He had tried to juggle his own plates, but had broken two and chipped a glass and given the whole thing up.

He had also given up, for the most part, on the housekeeping. The mantel sported a layer of dust, the doilies lay askew, used dishes were growing green in the sink. 

Bag End was empty, and quiet, and home had become a person rather than a place.

****

There was a faint chill in the air that evening, winter’s approach making itself known in the heart of autumn’s dominion. Bilbo sat on the bench his front garden for hours, smoking the last of his Longbottom tobacco and sipping dwarven whiskey. He ran his fingers idly over the chip in the rim of his glass as he drank, staring out across the lights of Hobbiton. Faint laughter came to his ears from somewhere; singing drifted in on the breeze. He sat in silence, and blew smoke rings. 

At last, the chill became too great as the sun sank below the distant horizon and Bilbo went inside. He poked about in the pantry for something appetizing, but gave up and gnawed half-heartedly at the stale heel of last week’s loaf.

He was staring into the fire, a book open and unread on his knees, when he heard knocking at his door. 

His heart stuttered in his chest. He was not expecting anyone. The last time he’d had unexpected visitors had been…his mind shied away before hope could rise up and choke him. 

The knock came again and the hope flared, despite his efforts to quash it. 

Bilbo leapt to his feet, book thumping to the floor. Another time, he might scoop it up, make certain the binding had not broken, place it carefully on the side table. But this evening he simply let it lie as he dashed toward the front door.

He flung open the door to find a very startled Hamfast Gamgee staring back at him.

“Hamfast?” he asked, voice cracking with disbelief and disappointment.

“Uh, your pardon, Master Baggins,” Hamfast stuttered. “Most terribly sorry to be disturbing you so late!”

“Uh, indeed, please do not worry about it,” Bilbo answered, recovering himself somewhat. “Was there something you needed, Mister Gamgee?”

“Nothing I need, no, not so’s you’d say, sir, that is, but I was at the Dragon earlier this evening, sir, and there was a company of dwarves there. I know how you like to talk to the dwarves, Master Baggins sir, and I thought to myself, ‘Gaffer,’ I thought, ‘Master Baggins will be wanting to know the dwarves have come,’ I thought. So I came by to tell you so,” Hamfast said, fidgeting nervously.

“Oh,” Bilbo answered. “Of course. Dwarves in town. Thank you kindly, Mister Gamgee. Very thoughtful of you. Good evening.”

“Yes, well, good evening, sir,” Hamfast answered, tugging respectfully at a forelock before quickly trotting back down Bagshot Row toward his own smial.

Bilbo shut the door behind him and leaned against it for long minutes, his forehead pressed to the cool wood.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” he berated himself.

The wood under his head vibrated suddenly with a short, but firm rap.

Bilbo jumped back and stared at his door. That knock had been very different from Gaffer Gamgee’s. Very different, indeed. The rap came again.

Bilbo exhaled sharply, then slowly stretched out a hand to the knob and pulled the door open.

The tall figure on his doorstep bowed and, in a voice like warm honey, declared, “Bofur! At your service!”

Bilbo could only stare. After so many dreams, and daydreams, of this moment, he could not believe what he was seeing was real.

Bofur stared back, his broad grin darkening toward dismay. “Bilbo? I…I know you didn’t expect me,” he said, slowly. “But I was hoping…for, uh, friendship’s sake…that is…I wanted…to see you?”

“Uh, um, oh!” Bilbo stammered. “Uh, yes, come in, of course! Don’t mind the state of the place; tomorrow’s my cleaning day!” He laughed weakly, ushering Bofur in through the door and taking the dwarf’s heavy coat.

“Oh, aye, lad, I understand,” Bofur started genially as he wandered deeper into the smial, then he stopped short, staring around at what was clearly many weeks’ worth of mess and neglect. He sucked in a breath. “I understand.”

Bilbo stood in the entrance hall, staring at his own hairy toes in paralyzed mortification. “Yes, well, yes,” was all he could manage.

Suddenly Bofur was right in front of him, his heavy boots entering Bilbo’s line of sight. A calloused finger was placed under his chin and Bilbo tipped his head up under that finger’s gentle pressure. Bofur gazed down at him from his few inches’ vantage. 

“Bilbo,” Bofur murmured, his voice a low burr. “I have missed you.”

“I…have missed you, too,” Bilbo said, then swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. He shook himself, pulling away from the furnace heat of the other. “Well, you must be tired!” he continued, his voice brisk now. “And hungry, unless you’ve eaten at the Dragon? Perhaps I could interest you in a cup of tea and some honey-cake?”

Bofur was silent for a moment and Bilbo imagined he saw a glint of hurt in the dwarf’s eyes. “Aye, lad,” he said at last. “I ate at the inn with the others, but a cup of tea would be right pleasant. And honey-cake, you say?” There was something else in his eyes, then. “I have not had a honey-cake since...well, in many long months.”

Bilbo wondered if it was possible Bofur was remembering the same thing he was remembering, the same thing the taste of honey always evoked for him now…those long evenings by the fire in Beorn’s hall, the two of them laughing and talking, crumbs of honey-cake still clinging to Bofur’s mustache, their heads swimming pleasantly from the mead they’d been drinking, their bodies swaying ever closer to one other but never quite touching.

Bilbo gulped. “They’re not quite as good as Beorn’s, but my recipe is getting closer.”

“I’m sure they will be wonderful, Bilbo,” Bofur answered, “since you made them.”

Bilbo met Bofur’s eyes and saw a hunger there, and a heat. Feeling greatly daring, with some small hobbitish part of himself screaming in terror in the back of his mind, Bilbo stepped forward and stretched up onto his toes and kissed Bofur hard on the mouth.

To Bilbo’s elated shock, Bofur did not pull away as he’d expected but instead brought his arms tightly around Bilbo’s body, deepening the kiss. Bilbo felt Bofur’s tongue flicker across his lips and opened his mouth under the onslaught. Bofur tasted like Bilbo had always thought he would, like tobacco smoke and dwarven whiskey and salt pork and _home_.

Suddenly, though, it was all too much. Too hot, too close, too soon, too _much_. Bilbo pushed away, breaking the kiss, gasping for air. Bofur looked down at him silently, uncertainty writ deep on his gentle face.

“I’ll…uh, see about that tea, then,” Bilbo muttered, and hurried off to the kitchen, sucking in great gasps of the smial's stale air. 

When he returned some time later carrying a tray laden with a steaming teapot, two mugs, and a plate of honey-cakes, Bilbo felt somewhat more collected and in control of himself, and yet that reckless wildness still simmered underneath it all. Bofur had snuggled himself into one of the comfortable chairs by the fireplace and Bilbo bustled about, getting the tea tray settled and the tea poured and the napkins unfolded just so.

“Bilbo!” Bofur said finally. “Bilbo, sit!”

Bilbo sighed heavily and dropped into the other chair. He saw that Bofur had picked up the fallen book and set it on the arm of the chair and Bilbo smiled to see it. “So, then!” Bilbo said, his voice falsely bright. “How have things been in Erebor since I left?”

“Bilbo….” Bofur started, then paused, watching the hobbit under his dark brows. He seemed to come to some decision and started again. “Bilbo...it has been lonely, my lad. Lonely.”

Bilbo did not know how to respond to that. He sipped gingerly at his hot tea to cover his silence, but then the recklessness, the Tookishness, took over. “I have been finding it…challenging…to pick up the threads of my old life,” he admitted finally. “It somehow feels as though something is missing. Or…someone.”

“Aye, I understand that,” Bofur said, his voice dark as whiskey. “Even with all my kin around me, even with all the work we have now, rebuilding Erebor and welcoming our scattered fellows home…it is not my place, somehow. I cannot fit myself there. I do not belong. I had thought perhaps to…to return to the Ered Luin…but I do not think I will find a home there, either, with Bombur and Bifur not with me. And…without you.”

Silence fell between them, broken only by the crackle of the fire in the hearth.

“Well, then!” Bilbo said briskly. “I suppose you ought to just move in here, then! Solve all our problems quite neatly!”

“Bilbo, I…are you sure?” Bofur asked, a heartbreaking hope dawning in his face.

“Of course!” Bilbo said, abandoning himself to Tookishness once and for all. “Bag End has more than room for two, and I could use some help around here once in a while, you know, with chores and maintenance and the like. I have a gardener, but I could use a skilled woodworker for some things. And, of course, there’s the fact that I quite fell head-over-hairy-toes in love with you an Age ago, so, yes, if you’d like to move in I’d very much like to have you here.”

Bofur surged out his chair in one swift movement, quite upsetting both their teacups...which fell to the floor and somehow did not break but spilled chamomile all over the hearth rug. But Bilbo could not care about that because Bofur was kissing him and lifting him out of his chair and then somehow they were in the bedroom and everything was smooth skin and soft hair and wetness and heat, everything Bilbo had dreamed of by night and imagined by day.

Some while later…it could have been minutes or months…Bofur rolled up on his side, propping his head with one hand and looked down at Bilbo. “I love you, too, you know.”


End file.
